South Korean police detained a man who yesterday rammed a large excavator into a gate near the office where prosecutors were questioning a woman at the center of a scandal that threatens the country’s president.
The attack with heavy construction equipment on the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office building in Seoul is part of a frenzy of emotion in South Korea over the woman, Choi Soon-sil, whom prosecutors have detained as they examine whether she used her close ties to South Korean President Park Geun-hye to pull government strings from the shadows and amass an illicit fortune.
Choi, 60, yesterday was held for a second day after being detained late on Monday to answer allegations of exerting inappropriate influence in state affairs.
Photo: Reuters
Worried that she might be a flight risk and could destroy evidence, prosecutors placed her under emergency detention without a warrant on Monday, Yonhap News Agency reported. Under local law, a suspect can be held without a warrant for up to 48 hours.
Prosecutors planned to file a court request for an arrest warrant today, Yonhap and other media said, citing a prosecution official.
Prosecutors were not immediately available for comment.
Choi arrived at the prosecutor’s office yesterday morning in handcuffs and a surgical mask and wearing a dark coat, escorted by correctional officers.
Although Choi was being questioned at another location, a man used an excavator to smash the front entrance of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office building, injuring a security guard, in an apparent act of protest against Choi. He was arrested by police.
According to Han Jeung-sub, a senior official at the Seocho Police Station, the 45-year-old man told police: “Choi Soon-sil said she had committed a crime she deserves to die for, so I came here to help her die.”
The detained man was identified only by his surname, Jeong.
As she arrived for questioning on Monday, Choi, using a common expression of deep repentance in South Korea, said: “I committed a sin that deserves death.”
Last week, amid intense speculation, Park acknowledged that Choi had edited some of her speeches and provided public-relations help.
Widespread reports have said Choi had a larger role in government affairs despite having no official ties to the administration.
Prosecutors are trying to determine the scope of access Choi had and whether she was given sensitive presidential documents.
Prosecutors have asked eight banks for documents related to Choi’s financial transactions, Yonhap reported yesterday, citing unnamed financial industry officials.
The scandal has resonated with South Koreans in a way that past corruption allegations have not.
Some of this has to do with Park, who has long been criticized for an aloof manner and for relying on only a few longtime confidantes.
That she might have been outsourcing sensitive decisions to someone outside of government, and someone connected with a murky, lurid backstory, has incensed many.
Choi told the Segye Ilbo newspaper last week that she received drafts of Park’s speeches after Park’s election victory but denied she had access to other official material, or that she influenced state affairs or benefited financially.
The president last week said that she had given Choi access to speech drafts early in her term and apologized for causing concern among the public.
Park, 64, and Choi have known each other for decades, and the president said in a televised apology last week that her friend had helped her through difficult times.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.